230. How Coworking Spaces Can Get (Really Great) Fractional Help Using a VA

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230. How Coworking Spaces Can Get (Really Great) Fractional Help Using a VA

00:00:01 Welcome to the Everything Coworking podcast, where you learn what you need to know about how the world wants to work. And now your host co-working space owner and trend expert, Jamie Russo. Welcome to the Everything Coworking podcast. This is your host, Jamie Russo. Today we are talking about virtual assistance and I wanted to record an intro because I think there are kind of some big picture things that we didn't mention in the episode.

00:00:45 So here are three reasons that I think coworking spaces might think about using virtual assistants and virtual assistants. We do talk about this in the episode, have a very, very broad application. So a virtual assistant is basically a fractional team member. They might do any number of things in your business. Finance, marketing sales admin. Definitely don't think of them as just admin.

00:01:18 They can be play any role. So VA is really a shared resource. A VA is a way for you or a member company to add capacity to your business without adding a full-time resource or having to find someone local who wants to do the thing you need done. Part-time so the, I think one of the big values of finding a virtual assistant is that they're a shared resource.

00:01:49 So they'll have other clients, they don't have to be located nearby. They can be a fractional part of your team. And Molly suggests my guest today starting at five hours a week, which is not a lot of time. So they can start to take things off of your plate again, in under any number of buckets of things that we do in a coworking space,

00:02:10 but also that your members might need. So back to my three reasons that I think this episode is interesting for co-working space operators, a VA or a fractional resource might help you grow your own Coworking business, or just make your business more sustainable for you and your team without adding a full-time team member, which can be a heavy lift, or it might help.

00:02:35 And, or, and or it might help you, your members to do the same. You may have members who are solo, preneurs, freelancers are building small teams and they may be in a similar boat where they have things that they want to get done in their business, but they're not ready to add a full-time person and they, or their team members are just at full capacity or they don't have the skills on their team that they need to get things done like social media,

00:03:03 you know, that's one of those things. It can take a special skillset or something finance-related. I just outsourced help with a model. I can make a model, but I can't do all the fancy bells and whistles. So I got some help doing that, not the same thing as using a VA, but we may think there are things that we or member companies need in our business to be more successful or more sustainable.

00:03:30 And we might want to help our members figure this out so that they can be more successful and can afford to continue their memberships. That's always a goal for our smaller members, right? We want them to be successful. And how do we help them be successful outside of networking and helping them connect with others in the space that might lead to work is help them be more efficient or help them get the time they need to spend on sales and marketing.

00:03:56 And then related to that, there are often this topic often comes up in our Flight Group calls, focus, thinking about offering a VA service to their members as an additional revenue stream. So taking the idea that our members could use some fractional resources and helping them connect with the right person and making that a revenue stream for ourselves, that aspect is not what Molly and I'd talk about today.

00:04:22 So Molly, my guest is the founder of virtual assistant management and training and placement company for virtual assistants. So she could work with your members and match them with the VA that has the skills that they're looking for to add to their business. Now, if you offered a service that you want to do to offer on your own to your members, you would need to set that up as a separate business and recruit the VA's yourself,

00:04:48 et cetera. So a totally different model. I will include links to the websites of a couple of folks in the coworking space who do offer that service to their members. So food for thought, but I wanted to just kick off and say, essentially, VA's are extra capacity for your team or your members team. And they can help with most, anything that you need done in your business,

00:05:10 not just repeatable tasks or data entry or that kind of thing. Today's VAs are really talented in a broad number of things and can learn a lot of things. And with our experience working remotely, we can learn to work with somebody who's located anywhere in the world, even so I'll stop there. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Molly and that it's thought-provoking around how you or your members might use a VA.

00:05:41 Find one, think about how they might work for your business and how the VA model typically works. Welcome. I have with me today, Molly rose speed. She is the founder of virtual assistant management, a training and placement company, virtual assistance. And she is in a beach town in Florida and actually has an appointment at a coworking space today. So she's up to speed on what we do.

00:06:09 And I was introduced to Molly by Anne long. And some of you who are in my programs, I've gotten to know Ann A. Little bit and is in Spokane Washington and is working on, I think she's working on her second and third locations. One of which is a code warehousing space. So I'm hoping to get in on the podcast soon too, but, and,

00:06:28 and Molly met and Ann was like, you need to get to know Molly because we'll be on calls together. And folks will talk about either their interest in running a virtual assistant program for their members, or just helping their members be more successful by getting the support they need. So Molly agreed to come on and kind of talk about what she does and how VA's work and how your members might use VAs.

00:06:52 So Molly, thank you for joining us today. Thanks Jamie. Excited to be here. Good. So, okay. Give us a little bit about your background and your journey to running the business that you run today. Yes. Love to. So I am a military spouse and with that comes the opportunity to be moving all of the time. So that's what I thought the trajectory of my life would look like.

00:07:18 However that changed. So I did corporate finance in my early twenties, realized real quickly that I wasn't going to be able to have the career I wanted to have with the potential of moving all of the time. So I started work as a virtual assistant and kind of self-taught myself everything I know today. And it went from doing basic tasks to building websites and booking,

00:07:40 speaking engagements and building courses, and more complex things that we hear virtual assistants doing to now running a training and placement company for virtual assistants. So it's all come full circle. The funny thing about all of this is I never moved. We were the, one of the lucky military people that never moved, but I got this wonderful career out of it with a lot of flexibility and travel and amazing entrepreneurs that I've supported and students that I've trained.

00:08:06 So it's been a great journey. So Molly, do you focus on recruiting other military spouses or is it kind of a range of folks? So it's a range, but majority of our virtual assistants are military just due to our network and those that we attract. And so that's kind of a great passion of mine to make sure that military spouses have the flexibility to have a job and that identity outside of their family or their spouse's career.

00:08:36 So that's a really good thing. Yeah. Especially, it's hard to imagine, you know, what, what you said your risk is like the, having to pick up and move your life and sort of start over again. And so I'm guessing you've been doing this for a little while, so there's probably been an evolution of a, I feel like the awareness of virtual assistance is just like growing and also just the accessibility of like the internet and how people use it to recruit people and find people Totally.

00:09:11 And the tech, like the software that we now have to communicate is huge. Back when we started, it was, you know, spreadsheets, email, Google drive, and now we have things like a sauna and Trello and All Of the things. Yeah. All these great things. And then the, the breadth of knowledge that virtual assistants now have is huge.

00:09:32 We do a lot of education on what a virtual assistant is and isn't, and it's hard to define because there are virtual assistants that were 87 hats and then there's some that were 10. So it's kind of just understanding that. So yeah, I mentioned before we started talking the term virtual assistant, I feel like maybe it's rooted in like a historical context that just is shifted a little bit because now so many of our team members are virtual,

00:10:00 so it's much more just like natural to have people that are working, you know, from anywhere. But yeah. Can you talk about sort of right. What is a VA and w yeah. What types of things do they do? Cause I think you're right. There's probably a little bit of a misunderstanding about what types of things they I've been challenged to change the title of,

00:10:24 of my students certification, just because it's so much more than that. So a virtual assistant in a general way, is anyone supporting an entrepreneur in an assistant role or an online business owner and an assistant role virtually. So working remotely doing anything that an executive assistant would do without being face-to-face. So that's things like scheduling email management podcast publishing like we're doing now travel booking,

00:11:00 social media should have the list right in front of me. Cause I always ramble a little bit course creation, blog, updates, website, updates, book, keeping managing more contractors. Let's say you have someone that's doing your branding or designing. They can handle all of that customer support, onboarding, running team meetings, taking notes, but driving, maybe we should,

00:11:25 We should reverse the question of like, what don't they do? Yeah. Call your mom. Although I have, I have done that for her client. That's hilarious. Right. But that is a good question. It is more business-focused than personal-focused. Yes. Yes. There are personal virtual assistance and we do place those as well. And they're handling a lot of the in-home things.

00:11:51 So paying bills, making sure your five-year-old daughters two, two is ordered and signed up for dance. These are things that they've Actually got one of those for sure. But I do want to say there is a big difference between what we call an OBM operations business manager and a virtual assistant OBMs are kind of the next level. So think of them as is truly running your business alongside of you and able to take over without direction and handle everything and usually manage then a virtual assistant or two underneath them.

00:12:26 So that's kind of the next level for a virtual assistant. I think it's super important because I think so, Hey, this might be useful for the folks listening in their own business and then all the members that are in coworking spaces, because as we grow our businesses, we could use resources that are sort of a little higher level that can take on sort of meatier pieces of the business,

00:12:53 but maybe we're not ready to hire full time. So I think one of the huge advantages, although I'd love to have you talk about kind of what the typical hours is, is sharing a resource that is really trained to be in that role, but it's a fractional resource, so you don't have to commit to the full time. So maybe I'll back up yet and say,

00:13:15 you know, what are the typical like packages that your team or your trained assistance sort of you do with clients? Yeah. So I recommend for the client and for the virtual assistant, no less than 20 hours a month, average five hours a week at anything less. It's just not, there's no energy there. That business owner isn't outsourcing what they should be.

00:13:38 If they really need a virtual assistant and the assistant can't do enough to feel valued and actually have the value come monetarily. So that's my recommendation to start. And every time someone books, you know, I'm just going to start with five hours within two months, they're at 10, I'd say nine times out of 10 Feet in the water. Like, oh,

00:13:58 this is going well and growing. So that's the minimum that I would say, and it just grows from there, but that virtual assistant also, I also recommend retainers. So you're guaranteeing that for each other. And then they can go ahead and get to other clients at 10 hours a month each and fill their deck and be set so they can just juggle their own schedule.

00:14:23 It's not like you have to find other business partners to go in on one person with together. Right. Which I think is the brilliant aspect of it. And maybe you have to train that person on a specific software that you use or aspects of your business, but they understand that role and how to work with you. And I think a good one can say,

00:14:45 okay, what, you know, here's what we, I can be helping you with. Exactly. Here's what we should, should do next. And I think for many entrepreneurs, I mean, I know, you know, if you hire a business coach or something like that, like one of the first things they'll have you do is make notes of what you spend your time on during the day.

00:15:04 And I think most of us like grossly underestimate the time we spend doing things that we shouldn't be doing. I know when I've, you know, started working with, I love when I work with the VA and they track time because I know that I totally underestimate how long something takes. And so it's really helpful for me to see like, oh, that's how you,

00:15:29 you spent like the podcast for instance, is a great example. Like we have a process that we run and it just takes a certain amount of time, but it's a great thing to outsource because it's totally repeatable. And we have all the templates and all the checklists in a sauna that, you know, you can just run through, but it takes a lot of time.

00:15:48 And if you think about a business owner again, this, you know, if you hire a business coach or, you know, read a business book, like they'll talk about, you need to think about what your hourly rate is or sort of should be and what your time is worth. If you could spend it pursuing new business, right? Like for,

00:16:09 for any of your co-working space members, for anybody listening, if they're growing a business there, you know, that's what they should be focused on. Not, you know, podcast up to templates in Canva, or I was just mentioning on our prep call. I had this we're running ads and I needed some analytics on the ads that had to be pulled really manually.

00:16:32 And I knew it would just take me a long time and it's a distraction and you know, all the things. So I gave, I recorded a long loom video for my VA and said, can you please try to do what I'm looking for here? And she did it and it was awesome. And it would have been, I would have had to just completely stop what I was doing and,

00:16:50 you know, get into that. And also the other thing I find, I'm sorry, I don't mean to take over, but no, it's great is certain, but just sort of playing on the, you know, you start with five hours and then you start thinking of it's taken me a while. I would say to really like offload some of the things that I should have offloaded,

00:17:08 like most recently making PowerPoint slides, I hate making slides. And yet, somehow I was feeling like I need to make the slide. And I just found a group that is unbelievable at making slides. And so now I just write my little outline and I send them the outline and they make the slides and it's like, amazing. I'm so much happier with like my monthly training that I do.

00:17:35 I was talking about the Mike Community Manager University. I love to develop the content, but not the actual sides. So it's like, you can also get things off of your plate that just, you're just not best at. And that don't like, bring you joy, like making slides in camp. It's lovely. It's Canva is still, did not bring me any joy.

00:17:58 And so it's like you really, and you can make the time to focus on the things that really move your business forward. And two things on that one, how many of us have started businesses? And now we're doing things in our business that we absolutely despise their phrase, started a business and created a job that we dislike. This is a way to fix that.

00:18:19 And to there are people out there so opposite of you, which makes sense. You like creating the content. I love creating the slides. So there's people out there that energy, But he is the thing that you don't like to do. Right. I want people to create the, you know, that's just, and it's great because you then have someone that's putting way more energy into something probably more efficient and you can stay in your zone of genius.

00:18:47 So it works really well. Yeah, exactly. So we, you would started to mention all the things that a VA can do. I mean, would you say in general they can do most things that are trainable? Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think there's things that people are better at than others. You know, I've been asked to negotiate and do sales.

00:19:11 Those are, those are a trained thing. You got to get comfortable with that. I wouldn't necessarily hire a virtual assistant to go do that, but you might identify someone. So there's things like that that are different person to person, but from a technical perspective, I think, yes. And then the creative side, there are virtual assistants that are really great at writing and can actually take that off your plate or designing where others would probably find a designer to help them with that and then be able to do the social media scheduling or post whatever the creation was to where it needed to be.

00:19:44 Yep. So in your business, you match folks with VAs. Yes. So what does that look like? Cause you just kind of mentioned right. More creative folks, more. Yeah. So created a training program. So virtual assistants get certified and then they can apply to join our management team. And then we placed them with entrepreneurs, online business owners,

00:20:09 some brick and mortar businesses as well. And we go through a discovery call to make sure that it's a good fit. You're ready for a virtual assistant. We can have someone that can staff your possession, decide to book. And then we go through a pretty intense hour, long consulting call and really pull those tasks out of you. That, you know,

00:20:30 we, we have entrepreneurs come to us that have five things on their plate. And by the time we're done, we're like, let's, let's beef this up a little bit. I think there's a lot more we can do. And talk about personality set. That'll be good hours, time zones budgets. Sometimes we have to ask question like political affiliation.

00:20:51 Cause if they're into that or religious affiliation, depending on what their businesses, there's a lot of cultural come in because we're able, not that that's going to totally vet someone out, but it helps kind of determine the pool and who will be a good match. And then we also had the opportunity to do disc assessments or any grams. Those are becoming very popular right now.

00:21:10 Everyone's looking for tubes because we're the helpers. Yeah. So there's a lot of things that go go into it that we take into account. And then we go to our pool of candidates and kind of do some soft interviews, see who will be a good fit. We send along two to three really strong candidates interview directly, and then they make the hire.

00:21:33 And right now we have two models you can pay hourly or you can pay a placement fee and then work directly with the virtual. Oh, interesting. So you're serving kind of as the recruiting arm, because I was going to say, I hiring a VA is like hiring any other team member. They have to be a right fit. And so it,

00:21:56 there is some lift there and I have certainly worked with VAs that were not a fit for whatever reason. And the time zone thing is, is a big one. So you work, do you work only with folks in the U S All of our virtual assistants are in the U S we do have some clients overseas, but they're the ones we do are American and they're there temporarily.

00:22:17 So it's not, Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, there are, trade-offs all around, but like, I've worked with folks in the Philippines and we were talking about this aspect. I have always wanted the VA to be sort of integrated into the team, like to a weekly meeting and sort of, you know, kind of understand the context of what the business is doing both for us and for them.

00:22:42 And when your time zone is so misaligned, I'm on the west coast. So working with someone in the Philippines, it's like the next, it's hard, very hard. So if you have things, if you never have to interact live with someone that can totally work, but there are a lot of advantages to working with folks who were in the same time zone.

00:23:03 And even for coworking space owners listening, sometimes, you know, folks will say like, well, what would I use a VA for? And some of the things I can think of are like onboarding and offboarding members is very repeatable. And if there is a, you know, it's very easy to make a step-by-step process for that, that the person in this space doesn't need to do.

00:23:23 But the time zone issue is, is real. Because if you're onboarding a member, you want to do that as quickly as possible. It doesn't have to be like a 9 1 1, but usually like same day. So, because, so that's another thing about virtual assistance though, is the VA is not sitting on the other end of your email, like waiting for you to like 9 1, 1 something,

00:23:47 right? Like you're treating them like a member of the team with projects and ongoing things. And you're not, I at least I've always been very sensitive. Like if I need something, that's kind of, time-sensitive, I'm trying to do that often. Yes, Yes. It does happen. I, I always recommend a Monday or Tuesday. Sometimes Mondays people want to stay in their own flow early morning meeting where you're running through a sauna or your project management choice and tasking out what needs to be done that week.

00:24:19 Really looking at the big picture. Then the virtual assistant can also say, Hey, I noticed we have this project coming up. I can work on this and they can become a part of the list building. They're not just getting delegated to all the time. That's the goal. And then if, if you want, you can follow up on Thursday or Friday what's been done or simply using something like a sauna.

00:24:38 Again, you can tell exactly where they're, at, what notes they have, what questions they have. There's never a gap in communication when you're doing something like that. So that's kind of what I recommend as a whole, and then monthly meetings or 90 day quarterly meetings. They should be a part of that because then they can see where they can add value.

00:24:57 Yep. And they can access count. I mean, mine have access to my calendar, my email. I'm not sure she has access to my inbox. I'd have to think about that, but she can do well. We have a email that she is part of our company email that she checks. So like the onboarding offboarding example, you could give someone access to your info account so that when they see a new member come in,

00:25:25 they can take it and, you know, run the process. I mean, they can really do anything that someone on site can do, but the, you know, your Community Manager on site, it needs to spend time with members often. And so, you know, sort of all the admin things are the things that take a long time to get to.

00:25:42 So I think those are helpful. So we're taught, we've referenced a lot of like project management tools, like a sauna. If I am someone listening, or I'm someone listening who has members who are kind of overwhelmed and feel like they need help, or maybe we recognize that they need help, but they don't have those things in place yet. Like how,

00:26:07 what would you tell someone who's like, yeah, I don't have a sauna. I don't have things documented. I'm just sort of swimming and doing it all myself right now. So I'm not ready for a VA. Yeah. I think you attributed to this earlier mentioned it. And I also have a guide@outsourceresource.co that can walk you through this. But I always say for two weeks that we've talked about this earlier,

00:26:29 write down everything, you do, everything you do. Coaches say this all the time. And at the end of two weeks, come back to it and circle all the things you physically have to do. So you have to call your mom, you have to go to a doctor's appointment, whatever it is, but you pro there's 90% of that. You probably physically don't,

00:26:49 you might want to, but, and then start to identify the things that you need to get off your plate. And that begins to build your outsourcing list. And then in the meantime, if you're not using a project management tool or keeping time of what you're doing, that's another thing to start doing, like start Monday morning, user first hour and write down everything that you needed to do for the week.

00:27:11 And if you decide to track time on that, you can kind of see how much time you're actually spending loading that social media post or onboarding that new person or dealing with a complaint or whatever it might be. And you'll start to see where your energy's actually going versus business development or sales or community management, or it probably should be as the owner of a coworking space,

00:27:34 Community Manager. And some of the, I think resistance is business owners. If they're used to doing things on their own, that it's best if they do it all. You know? So I think to your point, it's like letting go of some things, you know, and then getting used to, oh, someone else can do these things. Yes.

00:27:56 Yeah. And just as well as I can. And, And it is painful, right. When you have to train that thing, that might take you 10 minutes, it'll take you an hour to train on it. Like that's painful, but then you never have to do it again. So you really have to think about that forward-looking life or day,

00:28:18 the, how you're spending your days and just go through the work now to actually setting up the processes and training the, on the tasks that need to be outsourced. If you're somebody who just hates documenting processes, one of the things I've done before, which may be not ideal is you jump in and say, okay, I'm going to walk you through how to do this live.

00:28:39 You write it down, you make the loom videos, and then you have, you know, your team member basically documenting everything that they're working on in a shared location. We use loom, which I've mentioned a couple of times. Yeah. So loom is awesome. You can record just a video. I sent one to my team member earlier this morning.

00:28:58 I was like, I don't have time to type it long email, but here's what I, you know, here's what I'm thinking. And you can do share training videos and keep a library of those. And so as your VA sort of learns, you know, as you've maybe talk them through it, they can be the ones that make the checklist and document.

00:29:16 If that is just not your, you know, some people hate that stuff. We'll never get to it. So I feel like that shouldn't be the hurdle. It's like, you can hire somebody to do it. And then if you have a transition, then it's all there. Yeah. Loom has been brilliant for training and outsourcing. And I mean,

00:29:35 if you foreshadow that maybe in two months, three months, you're going to have a virtual assistant. You could start that now, just start recording yourself. Yep. And it can be messy. It doesn't have to be yes. Like I said, the, the, a loom video I recorded for this spreadsheet project, it was 24 minutes long. And I got the,

00:29:55 and I was like, oh my goodness, what have I just done to this poor girl? And then I was like, well, I was like, should I rerecord it and make it shorter? You know, like feeling like it needed to be perfect for her. I was like, it's fine. It's fine. She'll she can listen to it on two X,

00:30:11 you know, and she'll get it. So you just have to kind of get over it. Right. Things have to be perfect to just get them down. You can refine them as they go along. Hey, I just wanted to jump in really quickly before we continue with our discussion. If you're working on opening a co-working space, I want to invite you to join me for my free masterclass three behind the scenes secrets to opening a coworking space.

00:30:35 If you're working on opening a co-working space, I want to share the three decisions that I've seen successful operators make when they're creating their Coworking business. The masterclass is totally free. It's about an hour and include some Q and a. If you'd like to join me, you can register at Everything. Coworking dot com forward slash masterclass. If you already have a coworking space,

00:30:58 I want to make sure you know, about Community Manager, University, Community Manager, University is a training and development platform for community managers. And it can be for owner operators. It has content training resources, templates from day one to general manager. The platform includes many courses that cover the major buckets of the Community Manager role from community management, operations,

00:31:24 sales, and marketing, finance, and leadership. The content is laid out in a graduated learning path. So the Community Manager can identify what content is most relevant to them, depending on their experience and kind of jump in from there. We provide a live brand new training every single month for the Community Manager group. We also host a live Q and a call every single month so that the community managers can work through any challenges that they're having or opportunities get ideas from other community managers build their own peer network.

00:31:59 We also have a private slack group for the group. So if you're interested in learning more, you can go to Everything. Coworking dot com forward slash Community Manager. The, ah, I'm just trying to think of what else we should. Oh, how about the sort of mindset around like, I am not ready to budget wise afford help yet? Hmm.

00:32:24 I think that assessment of yourself and what you're making hourly is really important versus what you're going to pay out to a virtual assistant, starting small, you know, minimum five hours a week and being really diligent about what those tasks are. But then by focusing those extra five hours you have on money-making activities. So it might look like, okay, when I land this next client,

00:32:50 that's going to fill my cup to pay this virtual assistant. I'm committing to doing this and you have to do it. So maybe setting some assessments up, like there, some goals up like that for yourself, where, okay, I'm going to land this client for a thousand dollars. I'm going to pay my virtual assistant 500 next month. And then it's going to start the cycle.

00:33:09 Because again, that first 60 days might feel uncomfortable, but I truly believe having someone there to help you, we'll put you into more money-making opportunities or billable hours where you're really producing revenue to pay for that person. Yeah. I mean, it really depends on what you do for work, but the billable hour, one is an easy one. It's like,

00:33:32 look, if you have a virtual assistant that's and I don't, you have to tell me what is the range of hourly rates? So this is all over the place too. Like what the person does and, And overseas, you're going to get virtual assistants. You know, you might see $7 an hour. They used to be five. They're starting to trickle up through.

00:33:53 You might still find five. You have to remember overseas. You have to be very specific, very detailed oriented with what you're outsourcing most of the time. And that kind of goes all the way up to about 12, $15 an hour that I've seen and places like Upwork are great for that. I still use them for doing data research or some simple graphics for a US-based virtual assistant.

00:34:17 I, our, our placement agency starts at $22 an hour and goes up to 40 depending upon what they do for you. And that's kind of what I see. I see virtual assistants charging $60. I see. It's, it's, it's all over the place. Again. The term is slightly off because I'll, I'll see VA's with higher rates, but they're doing pretty specialized work.

00:34:42 And so they're really like a contracted, like special talent that you're adding to your team. And that rate is completely justified, but you think VA anything data entry? I think it's, yeah. It's like an outdated. Yeah. And the way that the market has gone these past few years, everything's going up, you know, I passed the local pizza shop the other day and you can make 1850 throwing pizzas.

00:35:09 So I value the person in my inbox with my credit card number. A lot of times, at least $20 an hour. Like that's, that's kind of where, where I want to see virtual assistants be. Yeah. So even round it up and call it 30 an hour, if you are seeing clients, your rate is probably higher, much higher than that.

00:35:32 Right. So that's to your point, like when you're, if you land a new client or you're thinking about like, okay, if somebody can take this off my plate and it only costs me $30 for that hour, and I could see a client, but the return on that is just a no brainer. But I think because it's an expense, it's like hard for people to make that move,

00:35:55 you know? Or if it's not the, if you, if you, your income is an hourly rate, it's maybe easier to do that math. And if it's not, yeah. Then it just feels like an expense. And it's hard to think about the shift of, okay, but I can use this hour to do things that build my business instead of yes.

00:36:14 Another thing to recognize is, and we see this all the time is a business owner emailing a task. That's maybe, can you please transcribe these videos for me, but don't let, if it takes too long, just stop or like, there's this fear of everything taking too long and it's, I can see them like stewing and it's, you have to remember once they get in and they're going to be way more efficient once they get their feet wet and start getting into your business.

00:36:41 And I tell my virtual assistants on our team integrity first, always if you're learning something new for the first time that you should know, if it's a specific software to the business, definitely bill your hours for that. That's really important. But if it's a new software that you should know, stop the clock, learn it, get your feet wet and then,

00:37:01 and then turn it on to start implementing. And they, they all agree in total. Everyone does that. So that's okay to ask your virtual assistant to do if they're a new hire. So just if you're learning something new, I just really appreciate it. If you would do that on your time and then bill me, but know that that's an option and that's what the good one.

00:37:20 Okay. But also the, I totally get the angst of like, how long is this going to take? And what does that, you know, are those hours going to just like disappear? But again, if they do that would have been your time spent doing that, like it needs to get done. It is just, it's really a mindset. It's tricky.

00:37:37 And for the folks listening, I think using offloading tasks that are not sort of business building will help your members be more successful. So our Coworking business, so the folks listening, they, their success is predicated on their members being successful. And so anything we can do to help our members be successful. And I think, you know, sometimes that's like training or networking or,

00:38:06 and sometimes that's like, get them help so that they can right. Find when that next client or whatever it is they do, you know, do in their business. So I think helping them learn how to offload some things so that they can focus on the right things is really a success driver. So, and I think people know that, which is why this topic comes up a lot in terms of,

00:38:28 so you're going to a coworking space today. And I don't know if you've, you know, have a lot of details on what they're thinking, but if a coworking space was interested in connecting their members with VAs, what does that process look, look like? And also you mentioned a resource and I want to link to it in the show notes for helping folks think about what cause that's the,

00:38:51 the, I think we met, I don't want to overstate this, but the whole like, okay. I feel like I could use help, but I don't really know yeah. What to get off of my plate. How would I use a VA? How, yeah. W what are you tell us what you have to help owners get over that hurdle?

00:39:08 Outsource resource.co is where you can get the guide that I've put together to help walk you through that two week or one month process to identify tasks. And then I'd invite you to book a discovery, call a virtual assistant management.com. It's free. I have a placement manager who's amazing. And just chat through it. If it could go to you wanting to hire a virtual assistant,

00:39:33 it could just offer some clarity for you on, on what you need or when you need it next. So that would be on our, our website, virtual assistant management.com. And you'll see a link to book there. And then also check out, you know, if you have things like research or very basic tasks, I find Upwork to still be,

00:39:53 or yeah, still at work to be a great resource. I use it a lot. I wouldn't necessarily recommend finding the military spouse virtual assistance there that I take a lot of pride in, but I think that there are some great people that you can outsource to on a basic level there. Yeah. Upwork, I think is a matter of sort of diving in,

00:40:17 get your feet wet and get used to it. And that's another one of those things that'll become bright addictive, but for right ongoing, there's a lot of trial and error in terms of fit, right? Like it's easy to see somebody who's good at a certain skill, but the fit piece, I think there's a ton of value. I've been matched to VAs a number of times.

00:40:36 And there's just a ton of value in someone making that match and doing the filtering. I mean, it's kind of like hiring a recruiter for a role on your team, right? It's yeah. There's a, we talk about hiring a lot on the podcast and yeah, it's, it's a lot of work and can take time. And so you're sort of short shortening that,

00:40:58 that lift to make yeah. Make it more likely that the fit is there and Yeah, because that's an investment a lot. We've had a lot of people come to us that have been burned by other experiences and that's an investment so that they lost. So we try to mitigate that as much as possible and have a lot of processes in place to confirm,

00:41:20 are you a good fit check in? Are you, is this still going well, how are things going? What can go better to really make sure it takes off? So that's our, our goal for this Partnerships. So in terms of just to kind of revisit the, when someone kicks off with a VA, what are some of the sort of success sort of steps that you recommend to help them kind of get up to speed and make sure that they're integrating that person kind of,

00:41:47 I mean, we talked about training and we talked about team meetings. Is there anything else? I think the onboarding is extremely important, just like when you onboard a new member of your coworking space, onboarding someone on your team, but also I train the virtual assistants to onboard you as well into the process of having a virtual assistant. So that's things like making sure passwords are handed over correctly,

00:42:12 any, add anything that could get in the way of them hitting the road and running that's really important and communication. I know it sounds simple, but it is the most important thing where we see partnerships fail and fail early. It's when the business owner is so busy that they can't show up for the virtual assistant and the virtual assistance feels bad. They're on a retainer.

00:42:34 They're trying to do the 10 hours that they need to. And they're literally not getting tasked with what they were told because they're so busy and why they need the virtual assistant in the perfect. So that's a bad cycle right there. Yeah. So we check-in and make sure, you know, we're very forward with the clients and very involved with virtual assistants to make sure that that doesn't happen or we can catch it.

00:42:57 And, but that's what I would watch out for being a business owner and making sure that you're utilizing your virtual assistant and the virtual assistant is letting you know, like I have capacity I'm ready for more, or, yeah, it's all about that communication. And again, it, a virtual assistant is not necessarily someone. Certainly you can give them one-off things to do when they come up.

00:43:19 But ideally you get them integrated into this person, does these things in my business and they don't need you to hand things over, like they have the context and they have the systems they need and you do the weekly meetings to check in, but it should, the, the person use it. The client shouldn't feel as though I need to spend a lot of time.

00:43:42 On-going right. There's, there's the onboarding and there's the training and there's the occasional 24 minute live video. Right. Really like they get into a groove and they can kind of run on their own with the weekly check-in I think that's it. I, I, you know, I think when I started using VAs, I worked with a matching group and they were just adamant about the weekly meeting.

00:44:05 And I thought like, it's so simple and yet it's so important because to your point, you sort of get off, you know, into your own little world and you don't stay connected and you don't have that context and you don't kind of keep them moving so that they can do things on their own. And then right. It's kind of a fail for both sides.

00:44:24 So, Yeah. Yeah. And you, you want people on your team that love to work with you. So treating them as more than someone that works behind a desk virtually in their house and themselves, it's, it just adds so much more, I say energy a lot, but it really is. And they show up more fully for your business and they do better work and they care and that's what we all want and people that work for and with us.

00:44:50 Yeah, totally. Yeah. And so is there anything I haven't asked that we should talk about related to VA's and I think we covered a lot. I'm looking at our list here. I, I think the coworking space is a breed of its own people that want to come together and work together on their own independent things. And it's such an amazing network to be able to support one another and use each other's services.

00:45:19 And I really encourage looking at this and, and what you can take off your place plate as for putting on anyone else's could be a virtual assistant, could be a web designer, could be a personal assistant. It really is. Life-changing when you start to outsource the things that you're truly not meant to do. And we, as business owners, the first person that started our business,

00:45:41 we did all of it and we've continued to do all of it and it doesn't need to be that way. So just kind of think that through for yourself and, and, and look at envision what your life could be like with a little support. Yeah. Or, or even for your team, because one of the other challenges I see folks get to the point where they say,

00:45:59 okay, my team is maxed out, but I'm not ready for another full-time person. And because the hiring market can be so challenging, it can be hard to find on your own, someone who wants that 10 hours a week. Right. So this is a way to sort of augment your team and take some things off of your Community Manager or your operations managers plate that doesn't have to be done on-site.

00:46:24 And maybe that's right. Social media or uploading blog posts, or finding writers to write blog, you know, all the things you don't get to write. Like that was one of the things that I was talking to my team member, Kristen, I said, okay, Carla, who's our VA. And again, she's a part of the team, but she's fractional.

00:46:41 And I, I said, okay, here's something we're not tracking. Let's get Carla to do it. And we'll just put it on the weekly list so that we're looking at it. So, I mean, that's just another thing. It's like all the things you, you know, not even that you're doing and shouldn't be doing, but things you can never get to in your business that you could give to somebody else.

00:47:01 And then it's their, you know, their KPI, their thing that they're in charge of, and it doesn't have to weigh on you. So yeah, I think offloading some of the things that your team is doing or that you're doing. And then again, members and I would, I, yeah, I, I think our listeners will maybe come up with some,

00:47:18 some creative ideas about how to get their members excited. I do feel like it could contribute a lot to their success and their ability to retain their membership. If their business is going well, getting help. So awesome. So Molly, I'll link to the download that you mentioned and the discovery call link on your website. So folks can learn more if they want to reach out or share this with their members.

00:47:42 So thank you for sharing your perspective and helping us understand more about the VA role and how it might help. Yeah, absolutely. I look forward to my meeting this afternoon at my local coworking space. And if you come up with any creative ideas, you'll have to share it. We'll do an update. Yeah, this has been great. Thank you,

00:47:59 Jamie. Thanks Molly. Hey there, thanks for sticking with us through the end of the episode, don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast player. And if you were enjoying the podcast, please go leave us a review. It helps other folks find the podcast who are thinking about starting a coworking space or already operating a coworking space and are looking to stay up to speed on tips and trends.

00:48:28 And we started a YouTube channel. We'd love to have you catch us on video. You can join us for podcast, videos, and Q and a videos and other things that we post to the channel. We'd love to see.

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